Children’s Fund Medway
By participation/engagement/involvement we mean real commitment to ensure the views and concerns of children young people and families influence decisions and outcomes. A simple analogy which may help to clarify this is that of a local bus service: the bus has passengers - by being on board the bus they are using the service but they are not participating - by being actively involved in making decisions about bus routes, types of vehicle etc they are actively participating in decision making processes to affect change. Try it yourselves and see the difference!
(55KB)
The Children's Fund key objectives require the active involvement of service users (children, young people and their families) in:
-
planning and delivering services
-
creating individual packages of support, and
-
empowering children, young people, families and communities to take responsibility and control of solutions for themselves.
|
We recognised that children and young people are important and that their voices need to be heard as they are our present and our future |
Participation Sub Group
What better example could there be of participation in action than the appointment in 2006 of Andrew (15 years old at the time) a founder member of the CFM Cool Kids Club and now one of its mentors, as the Chair of our Participation Sub Group!
Terms of Reference(47KB)
Minutes of Participation Sub Group meetings 2005 - 2008
January 2008(81KB)
November 2007(73KB)
September 2007(84KB)
May 2007(83KB)
January 2007(83KB)
November 2006(72KB)
September 200(77KB)
May 2006(82KB)
January 2006(79KB)
November 200(87KB)
September 2005(76KB)
To ensure that children and young people are at the heart of the Children's Fund Medway services, projects aim to:
-
Actively encourage involvement
-
Engage children, young people and their families with the design, delivery and evaluation of their project
-
Provide support and training for key workers engaged in participation delivery
-
Develop the confidence to reappraise and refocus work via the children
-
Build confidence in children so that they can be advocates for themselves and their project
-
Listen and act on what children and young people say
-
Ensure direct communication with children and young people is in their language and tested with them
-
Use evaluation as one of the key means for effective participation
-
Ensure wide agreement so that there is true ownership
Children's Fund Medway shared good practice through:
-
The use of tools - CHYPES (Children & Young People Evaluating Services); a video diary; survey/questionnaire; The Learning Tree; a Participation/Engagement Toolkit (in course of development)
-
The use of evaluation forms and other methods for involving participation
-
Piloting the various approaches for gauging the outcomes of the methods used
-
A quarterly newsletter
(Children Take Lead) which is widely distributed to professionals in
Medway who work with children
- Providing case studies re participation for the National Youth Agency's "Hear by Right" shared learning website:
Restorative Justice Conferencing (Medway Mediation)
Peer mediators raised concerns about the lack of a private space for them to carry out mediation.
- Networking Events (see below for details of our Participation Networking Event on 30/6/05)
|
We depend on service users to tell us what to do so that we can get it right. If you use one of the services provided by our projects please tell the people who run it that you would like to help with the design, delivery and evaluation of their project. |
We produced a Hard To Reach
Strategy/Toolkit called
Reaching Out(1.3MB)
for use by everyone working with children and young people in Medway.
This aims to ensure all children and young people in Medway, wherever they
are, are aware of Children's Fund and other services for children and young
people. The strategy was widely distributed in April 2005 and can also
be viewed using the above link.
On 30 June 2005 representatives from a wide variety of Medway organisations attended our Networking Event on Participation/Engagement and left with new or renewed enthusiasm for involving children and young people in the development and delivery of services. They heard how successful participation has been for many organisations and discussed ways of overcoming the perceived barriers to introducing these methods. An 18-year old young carer spoke enthusiastically about his involvement in the Medway Young Carers Forum. Delegates left with new ideas and possible solutions for their own projects and food for thought to take back to their organisations.
The workshop notes sent to all delegates and are also available below:
-
Workshop 1A
(104KB) What challenges have you faced or might you perceive in
trying to engage children and families in the development of your service?
(these results were collated under various headings/topics and the topics
which contained the most problems were then used to allocate themes for
workshop 1B)
-
Workshop 1B
(111KB) What are the solutions to try to resolve the challenges
identified in workshop 1A? (the answers to individual problems in workshop
1B do not profess to be the final or the only solutions, but offer food
for thought pending production of a toolkit)
-
Workshop 2
(154KB) What would you like to see in a participation toolkit to
aid the engagement of children and families in the development of your
project? This workshop showed there was a huge demand for such a a
toolkit. CFM will be producing a toolkit for Medway, based on views
received from workshops at this event and further development by a working
group formed from delegates who are committed to this approach. The
final results will be disseminated widely.
© Copyright 2005 Children's Fund Medway - Last Updated 31/01/2008